


Too Much Heart

by GhostGarrison



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, No Actual Character Death, Panic Attacks, Some crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostGarrison/pseuds/GhostGarrison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has been at The Ward for six weeks--alone and dying of liver failure at a slow but steady pace--when a new patient is rolled in. <i>'Heart failure'</i> Sam is told by this new stranger named Castiel, but Sam knows that this man's heart is as good as any other's, despite its fatal downfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much Heart

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: "Hear my heartbeat? Just focus on that."

Sam watches the nurses roll in the steel-framed bed in the early hours of the morning, fussing over the newest occupant of what is casually called “The Ward” by those who either work or live there.

Sam being the latter. He’s been living in The Ward for a little over six weeks now, having moved there on a Monday in late November and has been there ever since. His hall has been empty since a week after he was moved—there must not be a lot of people dying slowly but surely in the countryside, Sam surmises. He’s one of the unlucky few, it seems.

The nurses wheel the bed into the space beside Sam’s and shut the curtains that hang from a track on the ceiling promptly behind them, but Sam’s able to catch a shock of dark hair and the masculine jut of a square jaw before the pale blue curtains close.

His new neighbor must be a man—around his age, maybe a bit older.

He listens to the murmurs of the nurses and the sounds of wires being attached, machines being calibrated, and the occasional ‘does this hurt?’ and ‘can we get you something?’ but Sam doesn’t hear any verbal responses.

After a good fifteen minutes and a doctor visiting, all of the staff leave the hospice hall, leaving the blue curtains partially open. Sam garners as much strength as he can to reach over to pull them more open, to see the new person who has joined him in this hallway of Hell. It’s painful for him to do so, but everything hurts these days, even just breathing.

The man peers over the steel railings of his bed to Sam, cocking an eyebrow up before returning to stare at the ceiling.

"Hey," Sam says quietly, softly like the words themselves might hurt.

"Hello," the man returns stiffly, not sounding remotely interested in pleasantries.

"I’m Sam, and I’m, uh, here for liver failure, I guess." Sam winces as the words come out. He sounds so dumb, like he’s making this whole scenario into a dumb introduction game, an ice-breaker at a corporate party or the beginning of a therapy group. _'Hello, my name is Bob and I'm an addict'_ rings sarcastically through Sam’s mind. But really, all he’s trying to do is be friendly. “And you?”

The man continues to stare at the white ceiling tiles. Maybe he’s trying to count them. Sam already has, on more than a few occasions. It’s so easy to run out of things to do when stuck in a hospital for more than two months.

"There’s one hundred and twenty-eight of them, if that’s what you’re doing," Sam tries, smiling when that finally gets the attention of his new bedside neighbor, who looks at him questioningly. "The tiles. I counted them already, so you don’t have to."

The man stares at Sam instead, and he has some of the clearest blue eyes Sam has ever seen.

"So…" Sam reiterates. "I’m Sam."

Blinking, the man licks his dry lips. “Castiel,” he says in a labored breath.

"If you don’t mind me asking, what are you here for?"

"My heart," comes the simple answer in a gruff voice. Maybe a smoker, but that’s not Sam’s business to even think about it.

"Heart attack?" Castiel shakes his head. "Heart failure?"

Looking away, Castiel’s lips thin to a line. “Stage four.”

"Oh," Sam says, eyes returning to stare at his toes, peeking out from underneath of the rough thin hospital blanket. "Harsh."

When Sam snaps out of thought and comes back to full consciousness—from one of those weird, strange drifting sensations where he mentally checks out of reality for hours on end, something that he’s only recently started doing in the past few weeks—Castiel has already curled up underneath his own sheet, facing the window with his back to Sam.

It’s mid-afternoon and a perfectly justifiable time to take a nap, not that they needed a justified reason to take naps. They’re in constant states of exhaustion and pain, who wouldn’t nap all day? But Sam had a feeling that his neighbor, ‘Castiel’, wasn’t asleep yet.

"Hey," Sam says. "You awake?"

Castiel doesn’t reply, but the small movement when he adjust his legs on the hospital mattress gives him away.

"Castiel?"

"Don’t talk to me," he warns sternly. "Don’t."

"Are you sure? Because—"

“ _Don’t._ ”

Sam blinks at the rude behavior but doesn’t give it any more thought. He was unhappy coming to The Ward at first, too. He should cut the guy some slack, at least for now.

~

It’s nearly midnight when Sam wakes up for some odd reason. Not that it’s strange for him to wake up in the middle of the night, that’s actually quite usual for a man in his state. But no, something woke him up, he can tell.

He lies there in the dark for a few long moments before he hears it.

A small sniffle barely audible over the soft beeps of the heart monitors and over Castiel’s labored breathing. He lets out a distressed whimper and Sam immediately feels displaced in the room, like he’s walked into something he shouldn’t have seen.

"Are you okay? Do you need me to call a nurse?" Sam asks in extreme concern, finger poised over the nurse-call button on his bedside table.

Castiel sniffles, and Sam can just barely make out his head shaking in the low light of the hall. He also sees that the edges of Castiel’s eyes are shiny, wet with tears.

"My father always told me," Castiel says, voice quiet and raspy in the dark, "that I had too much _heart._ ”

Sam doesn’t make a comment, he really feels he doesn’t have a right to. Not in this situation. Not to this man.

" _Hah,_ " Castiel laughs bitterly, but it comes out more as a sputtering cough. His heart monitor’s beeps stutter in sync with the wracking of his body. "I suppose it’s cruel irony now."

"Are you on a list?" he asks the man, hesitating for a moment before needlessly elaborating. "You know, a transplant list?"

"I’ve had two." Sam is floored. Two transplants? "Neither worked."

Now that’s a real shock. He knew that transplants had a failure rate, but to have two operations, both of which didn’t work out? Damn, that’s some shit luck right there.

"I’m so sorry."

"There’s no reason for you to be."

They sit in silence for a few minutes, and it’s torture that Sam has to hear Castiel sniff back tears. He’s felt this way before, he knows how it feels to be placed in hospice, to finally realize that they’re _dying_.

"My family…" Castiel starts, his voice wavering and in the dark of the hall, Sam sees he’s trying to blink back more tears. "I have lost faith. In everything. In doctors, in treatments, in operations… _That’s_ why I’m here, Sam. That’s wh-why I-I,..”

Castiel lies on the bed a few feet away, curled up towards Sam, breathing rapidly with his heart beating quickly, the beeps are uneven and out of control.

He’s having a panic attack. Or a heart attack? Either way, Castiel could _die_ by this.

"Nurse? Nurse!" Sam shouts, scrambling in the dark to reach the call button again, but he’s stopped by Castiel’s voice.

"Please, don’t. Don’t call them, please."

"Breathe, Castiel. I know it’s hard, but you need to breathe," Sam tries coaching him through it, hoping to whoever might be listening that it’s a panic attack and not something worse.

"I can’t—"

"Focus on breathing. In and out, okay?"

"Sam—"

"Hear my heartbeat?" Sam asks, motioning to his own heart monitor that makes steady beeps and strong repeating wavelengths. "Just focus on that. In and out."

"Your heart… is so strong," Castiel says between breaths, finally stabilizing just like his monitor’s beeps. "I’m jealous."

Sam nods wordlessly, unable to find something to say.

"Maybe… it’ll make me stronger," Castiel whispers, eyes drooping shut and breaths evening out. He looks peaceful there, despite the still labored heaves of his chest and the uneven, jumpy beeping of the monitor attached to him.

"Yeah, Cas, maybe it will."

**Author's Note:**

> written for a Tumblr prompt. Find me there @ GhostGarrison.


End file.
